


born into this burning world

by forcynics



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: F/M, Fluff, references to abusive relationship with viserys
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-09-29
Updated: 2011-09-29
Packaged: 2018-05-24 00:59:40
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,986
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6136003
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/forcynics/pseuds/forcynics
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>AU - Rhaegar defeated Robert on the Trident. Many years later, Dany is brought to Winterfell for the purpose of a marriage alliance with the North.</p>
            </blockquote>





	born into this burning world

**Author's Note:**

> (originally published September 29, 2011 on livejournal)

*

 

Viserys is the one to tell her first. 

Dany’s curled up in her bed, running her fingers over the warm furs that she will need to wear soon enough. Everyone says it’s cold in the North, colder than it ever gets here at night, but she’s not sure if she can imagine that, any more than she can imagine snow.

“Are you excited, sister?” he asks her, the usual smirk tugging at his lips; she knows by this alone that she is not going to like what he will tell her, and she narrows her eyes at her older brother. 

Dany sits up in bed, pulling her furs up to her chin, even though it’s hardly cold here in the Red Keep. She is unsure what Viserys is referring to, and after a moment, she gives in and asks him; he is waiting for it, after all. 

“Excited to see Winterfell? They say it’s cold,” she tells him, almost petulant.

Her brother laughs, sitting himself on her bed and reaching out to tweak her nose, _hard_. She squeaks, he grins, and she glares at him. 

“Excited to meet your future _husband_ ,” he tells her, and that’s enough to shock the glare off her face. “Our dear king brother is marrying you off to Stark’s eldest son,” he tells her, and laughs, either at the surprise on her face or at the news itself.

“Disappointed you won’t be _my_ wife?” he asks when she can think of nothing to say, a nastier edge to his voice, and when she does manage a quiet “No”, the expression that follows on his face scares her. 

She thinks at first he might strike her, but then he only sneers, “I hope you grow to like the cold, sister.” 

She wants to pinch his nose, or maybe pull his hair, but she knows how he’d react, and she’s lucky enough to have avoided it once this evening.

He leaves her to panic over his announcement, boasting of important matters he is needed for, even though Dany is old enough to know that there is hardly anything Viserys actually does.

He lies, often, she knows that, and she whispers a prayer to the Mother, _let Viserys be lying, Mother, look after me, let me stay in King’s Landing, don’t make me live in the cold and marry a Northernman._

 

 

“The North bent the knee to us before, little sister,” Rhaegar tells her, when she is lying under the blankets of furs she has grown to appreciate as it grows colder and colder the further they travel along the Kingsroad. 

Rhaegar strokes her forehead once, with a smile, and she closes her eyes. “We had dragons then, but we have other means now. We have _you_ ,” he says, and she feels as if a fist is curling tightly around her stomach. 

“You will marry Robb Stark, and your sons and grandsons will be lords of Winterfell. Targaryen blood, ruling the North,” he says, and she understands. 

The North has always been the strongest threat to her brother’s reign, all that tension boiling under the surface - or perhaps freezing in the cold, and growing stronger there. The Starks bend the knee now, but they sided with Robert Baratheon in his rebellion, before her brother defeated him at the Trident. She knows all the stories about the men of the North, she has since she was a little girl, and she shivers, even underneath her furs.

“You’re our dragon now, aren’t you, little sister?” Rhaegar asks, and though she doesn’t open her eyes, she nods, and whispers, “I am.”

But after he leaves her to sleep, she thinks of the stories of the North, of the cold and the snow and the ice. 

She thinks the North is no place for a dragon.

 

 

Dany had only a vague image of Robb Stark in her mind, but even that was wrong. 

She had thought of someone much larger, no matter how many times she reminded herself he is only fourteen, barely two years older than herself. She had imagined someone gruff, stern, brutish, and frightening. A man of the North. 

But Robb is more his mother’s son, with his shock of unruly reddish brown hair, and a crooked grin that she catches a glimpse of when she watches him talk with his bastard brother, the one they call Jon; it makes him seem all at once less serious than his father, who scares her in some ways.

Robb is solemn when he addresses _her_ , though, his words curt and formal. She’s unused to being misliked - Viserys taunts her, but he’s her brother, and this is different - and takes to avoiding her future husband and playing with his siblings instead. 

The little girl, Arya, makes faces when she thinks Dany can’t see them, but Sansa is sweet and polite, and little Bran and Rickon press her with questions about the South and the knights of the Kingsguard.

The first time she is alone with Robb is an accident. She is fastening the pin of her ermine cloak as she walks down the hall, and it only his sudden cough that prevents her from walking straight into him. Dany lifts her head, acutely aware of the flush in her cheeks.

“You’re a far way from home, aren’t you?” 

He gestures at her attire, the northern clothing she’s styled herself in, all heavy wool and fur cloaks. It’s nothing like the dresses of lace and silk she wore in the South, and she thinks she must look ridiculous. 

Robb’s mouth tightens, and there is something startled in his eyes, as if he is surprised to find himself speaking to her, as if he’s only now remembered he doesn’t like her. 

She doesn’t know how to properly respond to his comment without saying that she _misses_ her home, and risking sounding disdainful of his. So instead, she tells him simply, “Sansa is going to show me how to build castles and people out of the snow.”

“Ah.” He nods, and the corner of his mouth gives way a little, a fond twitch at his sister’s name. Viserys never smiles like that when people are talking about _her_ , she thinks, but tells herself not to be so silly. 

“Would you like to join us?” she asks Robb quickly, and then feels even sillier. Robb probably does have important matters to attend to; Robb is the heir of Winterfell, and Robb is not Viserys.

But he makes no excuse, offers no reason other than a firm “No.” The smile is gone, and his face is hard again, and Dany tries not to squirm under his scrutiny, but she really is not accustomed to such disrespect, and cannot help herself. 

“You are aware I am your _King_ ’s sister?” she says as imperiously as she can manage, drawing herself up straight. “I could order you to join us outside.”

Robb’s mouth twitches again, and a long moment passes in silence between them before he finally nods. 

“Very well, then, your _Highness_ ,” he tells her, and turns around, stalking down the hall and leaving her to hurry after him, glaring.

 

 

It is still a shock, the snow. 

She almost expects to find herself back in King’s Landing every time she steps outside, but the landscape she always finds in it’s place is so jarringly different. 

Sansa is kneeling in the snow with Bran a far ways away, rolling and shaping it. Dany bends down and takes a handful, pressing it together and testing the way it sticks to itself, and to her gloves. When she looks up, Robb has turned around, and is watching her. She wonders if she’s doing it wrong somehow, but has just decided that she won’t bother to ask him when she is distracted by a flake of snow that the wind blows by her face. 

And then there are more, coming from nowhere, from the sky above, the summer snows of Winterfell lightly drifting down.

The snowflakes catch in her hair, barely visible against the silver-gold, even in the short moment before they melt. She can see them much better in Robb’s hair, catching in the dark curls. He is staring at her too, rolling his lower lip between his teeth, and he looks about to say something.

“Stick out your tongue.”

Her confusion must be evident; he laughs. (She’s not sure if she’s heard him laugh before).

“To catch the snowflakes,” he explains. “I used to when I was younger, everyone does. I don’t really know why. To taste them, I suppose.”

Dany doesn’t know what snow tastes like; before these last weeks, she’d never even seen the strange, white substance before. Her first instinct is to wonder if he is mocking her, but she doesn’t see why he would pick something so harmless if that was the case. 

She sticks out her tongue obligingly, tilting her head back and looking up at the falling snow. It isn’t long before she catches a flake - there isn’t much taste at all, except _cold_ , and she giggles.

“They taste cold,” she tells him. He smiles again, and she decides that she likes Robb’s smile, that he doesn’t seem nearly as rude or serious when he’s smiling. In the same moment, she decides that she especially likes that she has managed to coax a smile out of him, despite what distaste he clearly bears for her family.

She takes a step closer to him, and lifts her head again, mouth open to the falling snow. A few flakes tumble inside, cold again, and it’s such a funny sensation. She presses her gloved fingertips to her lips, and wonders suddenly if she appears a child to him now, catching snow on her tongue and laughing at how cold it is. She can feel it on her face too, biting, so very different from anything she’s used to.

And then she feels his hand, or rather his glove, on her cheek, slowly wiping flakes of snow off her skin in one brush. She stills instinctively, lets herself become as frozen as the North, for one brief moment. 

But she is fire, not ice, and a smile quickly tugs at her lips, warm. She tilts her chin up, her face closer to his, because surely this is what happens now, she thinks, though she has no experience to draw upon.

She is right.

He cups her cheek again, carefully, awkwardly, and then his mouth is pressing down on hers, _hard_ , harder than she expected, and cold too, but she likes it, and she presses back experimentally, though he is taller than her and she has to crane her neck.

“Your lips are blue,” she tells him once they’re pulled away from each other, a few seconds later. She wants to reach out and touch his lips, she thinks, or maybe kiss him again, but she curls her fingers tight instead. Inside her boots, her toes curl as well.

“As are yours,” he tells her, and now she sees the crooked grin again, and feels delightfully privileged that it is for her. She’s becoming determined that he should like her, she realizes, and hears Rhaegar’s voice in her mind. _“You’re our dragon now, aren’t you, little sister?”_

“You must be getting cold, though,” Robb says. “Shall we head inside?” he asks, and she nods. 

She will find Sansa later, apologize for being unable to remain outside in the snow, blame her southern blood. She pulls her cloak more tightly around her, and tries not to shiver as they cross back through the snow to the gates. 

When they are nearly there, Robb turns to look at her. 

“So how are you liking the snow, Daenerys?”

She blushes, thinking of the cold on her tongue as she caught falling flakes, and the cold on her lips as he kissed her.

“More than I expected,” she confesses.

 

 

*


End file.
